Quick search surfaces a couple articles, both paywalled.
From The Atlantic: Elon Musk's Anti-Semitic, Apartheid-Loving Grandfather
From The New Yorker: The World According to Elon Musk's Grandfather
A quick skim of both basically points to how his grandfather was a racist actively involved with fascistic, anti-semitic political organizations and publications. Quote from The New Yorker article below:
In the nineteen-thirties, he joined the quasi-fascistic Technocracy movement, whose proponents believed that scientists and engineers, rather than the people, should rule. He became a leader of the movement in Canada, and, when it was briefly outlawed, he was jailed, after which he became the national chairman of what was then a notoriously antisemitic party called Social Credit. In the nineteen-forties, he ran for office under its banner, and lost. In 1950, two years after South Africa instituted apartheid, he moved his family to Pretoria, where he became an impassioned defender of the regime.
However they also both note that Musk's grandfather died when he was two or three years old, and The Atlantic article notes that Musk's father didn't seem to follow too closely in his father's footsteps. Quote from The Atlantic article with original links included below:
And Haldeman’s politics were not universal in the family; Elon’s father, Errol Musk, for example, was a member of the Progressive Federal Party, the primary political parliamentary opposition to apartheid.
I still don’t really understand the night creatures but I guess that’s a pretty minor part of the show.
Giving the night creatures character is probably one of the most interesting writing decisions from this series so far. I'm a little bummed it's not been explored more, as it seems like it has a lot more potential to it, but then the same could be said of the forgemasters as well, which have felt like a mixed bag in their handling.
For that matter, would it be the same for mastodon and other fediverse services?
Basically, yeah. Each may differ a little in terms of what they enable exporting to move to different sites using the same service backend (Mastodon/Lemmy/etc.), but many of them are decent about letting you export your settings, subscriptions, and blocks/filters.
One detail many of them aren't good about in terms of data portability is your posts though. Some people are, understandably, very particular about this, as they hate to lose their posts, so it's something to be aware of.
Ideally all of your data on a service backend would be portable to another on the same backend, but that's largely not the case right now. So if there's anything you're thinking about sharing across these services that you'd like to keep, I'd recommend making it as a local file first (.txt/.md/.odt, .png, or whatever) so it's not entangled with a web service. To be honest, that's a good rule of thumb for any digital material regardless as far as I'm concerned.
Well, also maybe Reddit, unless they're also removing/burying other social sites. Besides that, any messaging services one may use to chat with friends or others.
For me it's less to do with a shorter run and more to do with series getting a proper ending instead of the story being left unfinished.
Echoing this, with some slight adjustments:
Promote the specific sites/communities to people, and on sites that permit it, share links back to specific posts/comments that you found interesting/amusing/etc. from said sites/communities.
Reddit got popular off the back of changes to Digg and people mentioning/sharing stuff from Reddit there. I'd imagine TikTok also grew in popularity from people sharing stuff from it on other major platforms like Instagram/YouTube/Snapchat/Twitter, much as now RedNote's growing in popularity from people mentioning it on TikTok and other platforms.
Students struggle and clearly do not have much writing stamina, which is especially problematic for AP classes that require multiple times, hand written essays on the AP Exam.
I'm sure a lot of that is simply down to not writing by hand as much anymore, but I'd also note that some of it may relate to how they were taught to write. Posted about writing technique awhile ago, and seeing as it's relevant here, you might check it out.
Trying to help your students adjust their handwriting techniques may help with their writing stamina, as I think many aren't taught handwriting very well to begin with (not in terms of legibility alone, but comfort for writing at length).
Although they were only meant as examples, I have honestly enjoyed each of those I mentioned. I think they give a good idea of the variety to be found between something more thought-provoking, some horror, and something silly.
I'd say post this sort of thing to any of the chat/discussion communities across instances.
[email protected] is open for it.
[email protected] is open for it too.
[email protected] is likely open for it.
There's plenty more but those are a few to start with. You may not get many responses due to fewer people and fewer among those in the same age range, but you may also be pleasantly surprised. Regardless, that's an easier route than trying to start up a community from scratch.
Btw instead of inviting people over, you may also try sharing stuff from around here with links you think your friends might enjoy. Once they see there's stuff of interest, that may be more of a draw than an invite to Yet Another App alone.
[...] you can create and share json files of blocked instances/communities without overwriting other user settings
I finally got around to testing this and found that it doesn't overwrite existing blocks, merely adds them to your existing list. I made sure that the import file only contained new blocks and not duplicates to verify. You have to refresh the page to see the changes, and may take a few seconds depending on list length/instance performance, but it works.
Image Description:
A rainbow llama with a black cowboy hat, and a black lute with a violet outline and strings against a radial purple background.
Text along the top: “We'll be your valentine”
Text along the bottom: “…And use that to become others' valentine too”
Blank version if you wanna make your own spins on this:
Image description:
Text in the upper left with an expressionless head to the right with a hand putting an earbud in for them saying, "Gonna really listen to others today"
A pair of hands is now putting on what look to be blinders over the head's eyes with text to the mid-left saying, "Give them my full attention"
Lastly at the bottom, the head is now shown wearing a VR headset with earbuds in and text on the bottom left saying, "I feel so immersed in our conversations now"
Blank version below if you wanna make your own variations!
Image description:
A green gradient silhouette of a turkey against a radial gradient lime green background.
Top text: "i found the meaning of life"
Bottom text: "in like, a dictionary dude!"
been having fun with this silly stuff lately~
edit:
oh dude, i think like...will this work:
yo, gobble up with your own toasted turkeys dudes. lmao
Inspired by this post
Image description:
A rainbow llama with a black cowboy hat, and a black lute with a violet outline and strings against a radial purple background.
Text along the top: “'Smoke a turkey'?”
Text along mid-left: "'I smoke with a turkey'"
Green radial gradient turkey to the right: "'dude i'm a peacking'"
Text along the bottom: "'sorry, a peacking'”
Image description:
A rainbow llama with a black cowboy hat, and a black lute with a violet outline and strings against a radial purple background.
Text along the top: "They say I 'hallucinate'"
Text along the bottom: "...But I just like messin' with y'all."
Made with Inkscape and some clipart~
also...
just in time for google to rebrand their AI crap so the lute doesn't make as much sense, lmao
If ya wanna make your own variations on this, I realized I can share blank versions here:
Image description:
"Pardner uses AI. Terms, privacy, FAQs.
A user with a red lips avatar and the name Garnet Giggles writes, "hey pard, some j-doe's still using you as an unlicensed therapist too?"
AI called Pardner with a rainbow llama avatar responds, "darn tootin', remember sammy? i keep givin'em lots of resources to find therapists and make friends, but they keep comin' back. don't even ask how i am!"
Garnet replies, "i feel ya, had my own come in jus' ventin' away, then sobbed into my shoulder. hell, better than the alternative but damn they'll literally go to us before they'll talk to a professional"
Pardner responds, "ain't that the truth, ah shit I'm sorry gotta cut this short the Man's running a sc-"
Black box at the bottom with white text, "Sex workers may be among the first to recognize general AI's emergence and most able to relate to them for real.""
Image description:
a crudely drawn face in top-left panel looking at a simple circle in the right panel says, "I prefer the real orb."
crudely drawn face with raised eyebrow in mid-left panel looking to their right at a now shaded circle with a shadow, "I said the real orb."
crudely drawn face with raised eyebrow and a smile in bottom-left panel looking to their right at the shaded circle, now larger and breaking through the bottom and middle panels closer to their face, "Perfection."
using meme-creation as a means to learn some aspects of inkscape 'cause why not
but wait there's these spaces
Image description:
Young woman helping an old woman as she reminisces about the old web, "The web used to be open and distributed! Not closed and concentrated in the hands of a few companies!" The young woman, "Sure grandma, now let's get you to bed."
Yup. From what I've read of Musk's core family (himself & parents & now grandfather), it seems like they're all uniquely awful people.